I bought Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 5 days ago. Played it yesterday for the 1st time.. til now is kind of a disappointment, i was hoping for more stuff to do than just grind (not that battlesystem sucks but sometimes gets boring fast). im in

Spoiler:

Maribel trying to get them on my side to face the Solids

...hope the game gets better as I advance (learn that from many other RPG's) .

Anyone played it?

I ended up selling all my JRPG's (Dragon Quest VIII, Star Ocean III and FFX&X2).
I just can't bear all that repetetive fighting. Realized I enjoyed RPGs like Oblivion, Okami, Zelda and Fallout a lot more. Shame though. I'm missing out on a lot of good stories :P

I don't know about all of you, but I thought final fantasy xii was a stronger jrpg in terms of gameplay then in story.

gameplay was just like .hack games and it had a weak story compared to others FF's so XII was nothing special .. imo :)

Started playing my old PS1 game "Azure dreams". Got it for a few years now but never really play it.
It's a bit repetitive since there's only one town and one tower for you to play in but it's strangely addictive as all the story revolves around the town. As you get more items to sell from the tower , you get money then you can build buildings and the town will grow and the side story will progress. Amusing game so far.

Persona 3 is freaking excellent. I'm 75 hours in right now and I've loved every minute of it.

Probably not everyone here will love it, but I've got to recommend Ahriman's Prophecy. It's FREEWARE, so you can give it a try and see what you think.

For an indie game, it's just mind-blowing. It's a huge game. I have to say I haven't finished it -- might not even be halfway -- but as far as I've gone it's great, and looks likely to remain great the rest of the way. Good graphics, interesting quests. There is quite a lot of combat, but each fight is over quickly and it doesn't dominate the story.

My only quibble is that the interface takes some getting used to, and there's not a lot of help available in the game. You'll need to do a certain amount of experimenting. Once you're familiar with what to do when, and what all the icons mean, it works well enough.

One bit of advice: Before moving on to a new area, make sure you're powered up and tooled up enough to wander at will through the area you're in and handle anything it can throw at you. Otherwise you're going to end up dead quite a lot.

I'm not a huge RPG fan, but I loved Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door. What an amazing game. The best part is it's turn-action based. It's turn based, but you actually do an action for each move and it does more damage. So it makes it much more fun (to me).

Yeah, that was great. But even better was the first Mario & Luigi RPG (for the Game Boy Advance). That story was just insane.

Recent events made me purchase Persona 3 and I'm about 12 hours into the game. Just beat the guardian on level 35 in Tartarus. So far I'm really enjoying the game. The grinding isn't as bad as you can tell your party to "run around and kill monsters" while you watch. Sweet! I hate grinding and the less I see of it, the better. Unless the battles are fun, which for some reason they are in this game.
*thumbs up*

For some reason I've gotten an interest in "Xenosaga" trilogy now. How is that one, is there a lot of grinding?

Eternal Sonata for the Xbox 360 is a damn fine game imo. I loved the art style and the storyline, along with the mesmerising music.

Also a new entry, Lost Oddyssey is very emotional but incredibly difficult! lol

I love most JRPG's myself, unless the battle system is so esoteric that i can't understand it. But they always have great characters and story, which is what I tend to go for.

Another interesting series is Valkyrie Profile 1 and 2 (you can get a VP1 remake for PSP). VP2: Silmeria was excellent imo, and well worth checking out if your a fan of Square Enix.

I liked Jade Cocoon and Wild Arms, and way way back I enjoyed Ultima I think I played that on Super NES.

I love jrpgs, but I really have to be in the mood for it. I guess that goes for every genre, I've become sick and tired of several genres and after a break, I always come back to the genres I like. I have Lost Odyssey waiting for me to be completed - a couple of hours into disc 2 now. But I felt for a break, so I haven't completed it yet.

But it's got a really a great turn-based battle system - or at least it requires strategy when fighting the bosses. I've died quite a few times, but it features and incredibly useful "retry" option that puts you back to the last checkpoint - usually just before the boss.

That really sounds like a feature I'd appreciate. Does it require a lot of grinding?
I gave up on Final Fantasy X and Star Ocean 3 because I never could get past a certain point without extensive leveling...

Yeah thats one of the reasons I havent played LO in a while, the difficulty of a boss I'm on now (disk 3) is FAR too hard! I must have tried it literally 10 times already and I always get owned right away.

Thing is, you can't really do proper "levelling up" in LO due to the capped level system. This is a real drawback imo, I'm really used to getting my characters overlevelled for bosses etc, but in LO, you can't do it!

Not that I don't like the game, I mean, I think its amazing really. Very very good story and full of emotion. I suppose I just wasn't expecting the huge learning curve.

Just out of interest, which boss is that?

The only non-optional boss that really gave me any real trouble was the first one you meet on the mountain. The optional ones on disc 4 definitely need you to do some grinding though.

I don't know what it is called, but its a sort of massive T-Rex style boss in a snow like area. I can't really say much without spoilers, but its shortly after an event in the 3rd disc which makes a lot of things "frozen", if you know what I mean lol.

I keep meaning to go back and try it again but Im on with other games at this very moment.

Ah, yeah, depending on how you've levelled up your characters, that can be tricky (due to the party splitting up not long before).

You can use a spoiler tag to hide any spoilers anyway, btw.

I'm in the mood of playing something JRPG with emphasis on story rather than battles with mechs in it. What games out there are there?
I've noticed that Xenogears and Xenosaga has mechs in them and looking at the reviews they've gotten, they sound at least ok. However, are they still good given today's standards or have they not aged well at all?

That would be a shame, they've already screwed it up making another female main character in 13. Number 10 was only decent and hardly any notable side quests, X-2 was satan incarnate, 11 is plain boring, 12 isn't even an RPG. If they mess up 13 any further they might as well call it quits for that series. It's hard to believe the same company ruining the final fantasy, chrono trigger and just giving away Xenogears to those gay hentai writers that made Xenosaga. If you want a decent rpg now, look to PS2 and run away screaming if "Square-Enix" is printed on the box...

So basically you don't like battle mode, you like rpgs in quake form? How is Zelda and Oblivion not repetetive fighting? The only difference is on Oblivion you level up your skills on the way doing a story type quest each time, and thusly you lose gameplay hours because it's not possible to add that much in a game and still make money or meet deadlines...

Uh, Xenogears is great, Xenosaga is a chick flick. Whatever today's standards means, Xenogears is about the best kind of RPG you could ever hope for all around. I rank Xenogears on the same level as FF6 and Chrono Trigger easily. If you like a billion hours of cutscenes in an estrogen driven closet lesbian/gay fest, you might try out the Xenosaga series, but I had to quit playing halfway through the second game. Also Xenosaga one ended about the time you'd expect to fight the middle front boss of any other game. If I can beat a game in 30 hours going at my pace I guarentee most people are beating it in 10-15...

Codeguru

Zelda and Oblivion might be repetitive, but at least they rely more on your skill as a player and not as much on you grinding countless hours in some bland dungeon. Each battle takes considerably less time to get through than the average Final Fantasy battle (references are FF7, FF8 & FF10). I'm currently playing Persona 3 and while the game requires you to grind in a bland dungeon, it's nowhere near what I'm used to in a JRPG. So there's still hope for the genre. As soon as I finish Disgaea 2 and Persona 3; I'm going to try and get Xenogears, FF6, FF9, Chrono Trigger & Chrono Cross running on my PSP and see what I missed.

I don't understand that last part about how Oblivion differs...

PS: I don't know if Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea 2 counts as JRPG, but they freaking ROCK!

I think I see a pattern here. :P

Btw, what's wrong with XIII having a female leading character?

Try also getting Breath of Fire II or IV , both great games. You'll love FF6 and Trigger.

Anyone knows if Chrono Cross is worth a try?

I'm finally up to the 4th disc of Lost Odyssey now. Its still amazing, and still difficult!!! I just beat this boss where it kept casting 700 damage on the whole party EVERY turn! That was extremely hard, though finally I managed it.

Excellent game though, I'd reccomend it to anyone.

Currently playing Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis for PS2 , pretty entertaining so far. Loved the structure of the game , it's very user friendly. It's all centered around the alchemy school - going to classes , get the assignment , go exploring to complete assignment , get grades , get free time to do what you want , get jobs , learn some personal history etc etc. The characters are likeable and it's been fun. :)

The original Grandia was an incredible game. It's a real shame they allowed the series to be tarnished by such average sequels that don't appear to have anything to do with the original from as far as what I've been told.

Although a tactics RPG, Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is too unique an RPG to miss out on.

I've played Grandia II on the PC some years ago and it was an OK game. I'm going through some oldies right now starting with Chrono Trigger. When I'm done I've got Xenogears, Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy IV, VI, VII & IX left. I won't be done with them any time this year at least :-)

After that, be sure to play the Suikoden games (esp. Suikoden 2 and 5). Also Valkyrie Profile could be worth to take a look at (only played the second one for PS2).

Yes, my friend also vouched for Suikoden, so I'll definitely see if I can get it for a fair price somewhere. It's also an unexplored IP for me so it's going to be interesting to see what it can offer. I've read about Valkyrie Profile, but I think I'll save it until I've worked off the more "hyped" games on my "todo list".